Post/Author/DateTime	Post
iwasgreat 02-07-04, 01:58 PM	Hey everyone I'm running a game in the Warcraft rpg setting and I got a party of five orcs, 3 fighters, 1 scout ( ranger ), and a healer ( cleric ). They all spent half there starting wealth on a starting mount. Well the horde strictly uses dire wolves as mounts. I'm having trouble finding out how to assign chalenge ratings for them, there all level 2 and there mounts have a CR 3. What should there party level be considered? I was doing fine awarding exp and all until two of my group of four villians defeated them and made them run. I couldn't, for the life of me, figure out what to award the villians in exp for defeating the players. Basically I'm confused about CR, EL and mounts. Input please
quaiven 02-07-04, 05:01 PM	You really don't have to worry about it so much. Just increase the villans by a level if you want them to be tougher the next time they are encountered. Or leave them as they are. You don't have to worry about awarding experience to the bad guys, just do what you want with them. As for the mounts though, I think there is something in the DMG that says your mount shouldn't have a higher CR than you. But if you allow it that's fine, just take into consideration that it makes the party tougher than they should be, so the bad guys should be tougher to match. As to the Party's CR: CR is an individual thing, it is not applied to groups only to single monsters. Each of your PC's has a CR of 2 and each of their mounts has a CR of 3. The Party's EL on the other hand: 4 2nd level orcs = EL 6 so 5 second level orcs would probably be a 7. Mounts, Cohorts, Familiars, Followers, and Animal Companions do not increase the EL. (You can award exp for defeating them as per their CR but they don't increase the EL) So if you want to be technical and award exp to the bad guys for defeating the party, they should receive exp as if they had defeated 5 CR 2 creatures and 5 CR 3 creatures. Which depending on the level of the bad guys could make for quite a lot of exp.
Autosponge 02-07-04, 05:13 PM	Assuming that the orcs are fighting mounted and the dire wolves will attack during combat (either they have enough riding skill or it's not needed) I'd say your party is somewhere between a 9 and 10 EL group. On the table a 3+2 is between a 3+1 and a 4+2. Five 4+2's would be a 10 EL while five 3+1's would be a 9. I'd err on the side of caution and make them an EL9. As to what you can throw at them, I'd avoid too many encounters with fewer than 5 enemies. Start them out with lower-level enemies with the same or greater numbers. If you took 2 mid-level characters and gave them 10 lowbies to fight, the lowbies would likely get torn up. It's the same here, just in reverse. If you matched them with an encouter set AT their level, they have (on average) a 50% chance of winning. However, given that they have so many characters this could represent 50% casualties or more to succeed. If you're using a couple NPCs or monsters with levels, go with an EL that is at least 2 lower than their group. Otherwise they're going to have a couple deaths every session.
iwasgreat 02-07-04, 05:26 PM	Thanks for the advice, As for my villians, I'm trying something different. There a little ahead of the PC's in level and there going to develope as the game progresses acording to what happens. I'm pretty much treating them like my personal Pc's. So far its been interesting as there a race that the orcs commited genoicide on in the past ( Draenie) and are trying to get everyone around the or homeland to fight them. So I wanted these four guys to seem as real as possible becuase there "evil" acts are almost justified.